Creating a Book Club Culture at Home with Surviving the Applewhites

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Since reading Sarah Mackenzie's The Read Aloud Family last summer, I have been striving to create a book club culture at home. The two easiest ways to do this are to eat foods that are mentioned in the book and to watch a movie that goes along with the book. 

Surviving the Applewhites is a great book for a bookclub night! Our copy of the book even had discussion questions in the back that we enjoyed talking about over our themed dinner. The girls enjoyed getting to tell Brian all about the book and who their favorite characters were. 

For our Surviving the Applewhites book club night, we ate Indian food that the girls prepared using their Taste of India themed Raddish Subscription box and we watched the Sound of Music. In Surviving the Applewhites, the characters eat a lot of spicy Indian food (don't forget the purple kool-aid!) and a big part of the storyline revolves around the characters putting on a play of the Sound of Music so we definitely had to watch that! 







Rich + Rooted Passover

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

This year to prepare our hearts for celebrating the Resurrection of Christ, we used Jennifer Naraki's Rich + Rooted Passover Curriculum. Circumstances lead to us only making it about halfway through, but what we did accomplish really was rich and meaningful. 

Ash Wednesday... 




I have never observed Ash Wednesday before but it was actually a really deep meaningful way to focus on mourning the sins we are struggling with, repent of them, and focus on the cleansing that only Christ's death and resurrection can provide us. 


Not quite sure why Kenley added Roy Robinson to the Fruits of the Spirit? 


Each day there was copy work for the girls to do and then add their own picture to the top of the copy work from the scripture portion that we had read. Both girls really enjoyed the copy work and their drawings were hilarious! 



We even had some friends join us one day as we discussed the 10 Commandments, which we just so happened to have memorized this year at CC... 


Due to the remodeling at our house, some days we took our lesson and copy work with us to coffee shops! 

I can't wait to go through it again next year and hopefully make it through the whole curriculum! 

December 2018: Slow + Sacred Advent and Christmas

Friday, May 10, 2019

As I went back through all of these pictures to make this blog post I realized that we had a very full December and Christmas Season! It was a very sweet time for us, and I can't believe that next year we will have a baby here! 

This past Christmas, incorporated Jennifer Naraki's Slow + Sacred Advent into our Advent routine. We loved it and I think it is something we will cherish doing together each year!

Advent activities are even more fun when your friends are doing the same advent curriculum and invite you over to make the Orange Cake with them!

Another one of the activities was making cinnamon applesauce ornaments! We had friends over to make them with us!

Cutting sticks to make wooden stars...



Another activity that we did this Christmas season was to do a 12 Days of Christmas Secret Nativity drop off for 2 of the girls neighbor friends! We ordered the Safari Ltd. Nativity Toob and printed the tags from this blog. The girls had so much fun attempting to secretly deliver a nativity piece each day! Attempting is the key word there, I'm pretty sure they got caught at one of the neighbors every single time! On the last day we dropped off Jesus and some cookies along with a card Kenley made for them!



We made our annual trip to the Melting Pot and the Nutcracker at the PNB Ballet with the Siedenburg girls! This is another one of my most favorite Christmas traditions! 











The girls had their first piano recital. Claire played Jolly Old Saint Nicholas... 


Kenley played Jingle Bells... 


Proud Daddy...

We have a Glass Blower in our neighborhood that did a Christmas event. We went and watched them make a blown glass Christmas mouse! He wouldn't tell us what he was making while he made it so we had to keep guessing! 

We went to Molbacks with Auntie and Grammy....




At UVillage with Liam... 

Kenley made Christmas decorations....




On the 20th for Claire's birthday, Brian took the day off and we surprised the girls with a trip to Leavenworth to go sledding! 




Happy 8th Birthday CLo!

We arrived home to a downed tree that took out our power for 3 days! 


Sometimes (especially after a 3 day power outage) you have to improvise with the advent activities and these cookies brought just as much joy as actually making cookies...

Our favorite Santa Paul! Paul is a deacon at our Church and we have a Santa Sunday where he dresses up as Santa and a photographer from church takes photos for everyone! There was a time (during our more legalistic days) when we visited a church in NC that mentioned Santa during a kids thing in the service, so we left and didn't ever return. Haha! I'm glad those days are behind us and we can just have fun with the season even if we don't "do Santa". 

Another advent addition we added this year was this Story of Christmas book set. I can't recommend it because I felt like it didn't stick to what the Bible actually says and embellished a little too much for my taste. It sure is cute, but I don't think we will use it next year. 

A tradition we have had for a few years is our advent candle path that Mary and Joseph travel along to get to the manger. I love it! It is my favorite Christmas tradition! We usually light a candle for the night and then all the previous nights and then read an advent Bible verse and pray together. 


Christmas Morning... 


 
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